Ghosts
by LittleSnaketail
Summary: There is no good or evil in a war, and everyone has their conflicts, secrets and guilt... Based on an imaginary headfanon(?) that non-Force users can be ghosts as well. Rated T just in case; mentions of blood.
1. Chapter 1

So I started my fanfiction career with a crack fic. Thing is, I'm probably gonna write all sorts of things here and not all of them are going to be humorous. This one was inspired by this Tumblr post: post/143097965698/ (which, ironically, happened to be funny), but when my brain processed the core idea of that post into a fanfic concept it decided to throw away the humor part.  
So... Enjoy this one with a serious face please. (Not that it's a must)

P.S. Tua was one of my favorite Imperials and Disney just had to kill her off. I'm hoping against hope that she will come back someday. She had such potential as a character.

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars Rebels or any of its characters.

Background of current chapter: "Siege on Lothal"

* * *

It was the middle of the night, very well past midnight. The streets were quiet, and unless you stumbled into a certain clearing you would've had no idea what took place earlier on.  
It was in this clearing that Agent Kallus strolled about with only a few stormtroopers keeping him company.  
The mangled remains of an Imperial shuttle sat in the middle of the clearing.  
After said shuttle, with the intended passenger on board, had been successfully detonated by a remotely controlled bomb, and the pesky rebel team having escaped once again, it was up to Kallus to take care of the wreckage.

He lazily patrolled around its remains, checking for any stray fuses that might cause an extra explosion, any remaining flames or pools of oil. Safety measures were necessary when disposing of something like this: mostly electric, with flammable components everywhere.  
Even after the explosion, the general structure of the ship was recognizable: Imperial shuttles were built to protect its passengers to a certain degree, after all.

 _Not when the attack's from the inside,_ Kallus thought as he bent down to examine its interior. He could just make out a few broken seats, the metal platings of the wall wrinkled, blackened, and torn, holes everywhere. Various kinds of burnt material hanging from the ceiling and littering the floors. He thought he saw the tip of a blue Lothal women's hat...

A flash of a feeling that passed within a second.  
Was that guilt?  
No, he did what the Empire asked of him.  
But was this the right thing to do?  
He had lived his whole life believing the Empire was the right way, but lately those beliefs had wavered ever so slightly.  
Had the executions of Aresko and Grint been so necessary?  
And what of the Minister?  
She was a good politician; even though her style wasn't exactly the military Agent's cup of tea, he had to acknowledge that Lothal had faired rather well under her management.  
Did she really deserve this?

 _It's none of my concern,_ Kallus thought, firmly pushing the doubts away.  
 _She failed to comply to the Grand Moff's orders and this is her punishment. Besides, my job is being an Agent of the Empire, not its psychologist. I must retain professionalism within my own field._  
Somewhat satisfied with that thought, Kallus looked inside the blackened shuttle again. It was completely dark inside save for the moonlight filtering through numerous holes caused by the explosion; all in all, it was just light enough for Kallus's sharp eyes to make out silhouettes of independent objects.  
He decided to check inside; he would do his job properly.

He crept inside the shuttle, picking his way around what appeared to be two burnt seats blocking the entrance.  
The shuttle was large - that is, for one person. It was designed to accommodate up to a dozen passengers if required.  
The Agent ducked below sunken metal parts of the roof and stepped over more charred metal, making his way slowly towards the cockpit. Once, he thought he stepped on something soft, not metal, but organic, dead...  
His stomach churned, but he chose not to look down.

Then, he heard a voice.

"Help..."

He quickly turned around, but no one was in the vessel with him. By the sounds of it, the stormtroopers were still intent on obeying his last order: Dragging and loading the shuttle's torn left wing onto a disposal unit.

"It... hurts..."

The voice came again. It was a familiar tone, weak, but definitely feminine...

"So... much..."

But the Agent couldn't believe it. He didn't want to.  
No one could've survived such an explosion, perhaps excluding a powerful Force user, but that was out of the question. Was he hearing things?

"Somebody... someone..."

 _No, I'm not,_ he thought bitterly as a knot formed in his stomach.  
Carefully, he picked his way through the wreckage towards the source of the voice, which happened to be farther inwards.

It was only a few steps until he was near the entrance of the cockpit; a metal partition had fallen down from one side to lean against its opposite side counterpart. Debree piled waist-high hindered him from advancing, and Agent Kallus craned his neck to see the pilots' seats and the window, equally broken-looking.

"Help..."

The voice came again, so much closer than before that Kallus started, looking this way and that.  
The pile of wreckage had limited his vision, but now, he looked again.

What he saw caused his face to turn chalk white; he almost yelled.  
Sitting among the debris, the Minister was leaning against the broken partition, her face hidden from view.  
"Wh- H- how- You should be dead!" he stammered out at last.  
The Minister raised her head in his direction.  
Agent Kallus felt something he had not felt in a long time, something he had chosen, tried, forced himself not to feel on so many occasions.  
It was fear. Pure horror gripped him as he stared, transfixed.  
Something was wrong, very, very, wrong.  
She was there, but wasn't; he could see right through her.

Her appearance was not like what he saw before her untimely death; her uniform was torn everywhere, dark liquid seeped from patches of skin, leaked from her mouth and trickled down her face.  
One eye was replaced with an unrecognizable mess.  
The other stared at him blankly, just one white, soulless eye with no pupils...

Then something happened.  
It was as though this _ghost_ \- he had no other word for it at the moment - recognized him. Its - or _her,_ he didn't know what to think of that either- face painfully twisted into something best described as an expression of terror.  
"No... no," the voice again, clearly issuing from the nearly transparent mouth.  
The ghost stood up now, visibly trembling. "Please..."  
It started backing away.  
Abruptly, it turned its back and fled.  
Disappeared like that. Straight into the broken partition, as though melting into it.

Agent Kallus did not know how he got back to his troops; only that he had stumbled out from the shuttle, screaming and covered in sweat, insisting that the stormtroopers do a thorough search of the vessel at once, as recounted by one RF-385. He had seemed completely out of his mind, the trooper said.

"Nothing but metal and plastic, sir," said another SP-9088, returnig from the search with his fellows close behind.  
"Also a lot of circuity stuff, but I'm no technician, sir," he added.  
"Are-" Kallus changed his sentence. He was calming down now. "I see. Dispose of everything according to procedure," he ordered. While the soldiers went to do their job, he took a long breath.  
It was just an illusion. It had to be.  
 _Probably from the lack of sleep,_ he assured himself. The last few days had been hectic, mainly because of those darned rebels.  
 _Hmph._ How could he have let such a small thing take hold of his mind?  
He definitely needed to mentally train himself more.

The troopers came back with the sound of disposal droids grinding away in the background. "All taken care of, sir," said a TK-587.  
"Good. Report to the Transportation and Disposal departments."  
"Yes, sir."  
"Now go."  
"...sir?"  
"What is it, trooper?"  
"What should be reported of... the incident?"  
"...That is highly insignificant information and a private issue. Do not report it."  
"Understood, sir."

But SP-9088 had not told everything. He pushed an unpleasant memory into the darkest corner of his mind.  
The body of the Minister, buried in the wreck, uniform torn apart, covered with blood and one mangled side of her face where her eye should have been.  
He had undergone the gruelling task of dragging the body of his former superior out of a mangled shuttle and into yet another disposal unit of the many, away from view.  
He decided to never expose that memory again, not to any other people nor to himself.  
He walked away towards his fellow troopers, thinking about duties currently at hand.

The clearing was now devoid of any signs of a former explosion, save for a few stormtroopers, several large disposal droid units and an Imperial agent preparing for departure.  
None of them was aware of a pale, transparent figure watching in the distance.

The figure of the former Prime Minister of Lothal.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars Rebels or any of its characters.

Chapter background: Some time after Season 1 "Call to Action"

* * *

"Thanks," said Ezra as he disappeared into the darkness.  
"You're welcome," murmured Zare Leonis.  
He had now been acting as a spy for his rebel friend for quite some time.  
Even though he was confined within the academy, he felt a sense of purpose, a feeling that he was finally doing somethig for his sister, to stand up against the Empire.  
 _But you can't play spy forever,_ said a small voice in his head. _You'll have to stay or leave. If you continue, you'll get caught._  
The voice argued on.  
 _But I've been doing this for a long time, and I never have been caught, so why quit now?_  
He retorted, subduing the doubts.

He put his helmet back on and was about to return to his dormitory when-  
"Traitor."  
He nearly jumped out of his skin, reflex making him jump behind a rack of laundry piles. He had heard no footsteps; the voice had seemingly come out of thin air. How was this possible?  
Carefully, he poked his head from behind the rack and looked around.  
The facility was completely devoid of people, save for himself.  
There was a scuttering sound which almost gave him a heart attack, but to his immense relief it just turned out to be a stray bug. He shooed it away.

Then,  
"I should've known there was something fishy about you."  
The voice came from directly above him.  
Once more by reflex, he looked up, and he nearly fainted.  
"Playing Rebel now, hmm?" said Commandant Aresko disdainfully, his tall figure leaning over the recoiling figure of one of his former cadets.

Zare Leonis couldn't believe what he was seeing. Commandant Aresko and Taskmaster Grint were supposed to be dead.  
Killed in a battle against rebels, the new officer had told them.  
Of course, he did not believe all of it; as far as he was concerned, it was an inside job.  
But no matter the manner, there could be no doubt that they were dead.  
And now, the Commandant was scrutinizing him with his usual glare, standing right in front of him, tall, lean, transparent...  
Transparent?

The unpleasant realization hit him: the man _was_ dead. He could see right through him, but the question was, how?  
But he had no time to investigate or seek an answer to that question, for at that moment Aresko said once more, "Traitor."  
He looked up right into his former trainer's face, fury and disdain etched in those irritated-looking features.  
The Commandant was now standing only two feet away.  
With a jolt, Zare realized that his face was sliding forward- if that could be called so.  
He now noticed a visible cut that went right through the officer's neck.  
Slowly, the head slid forward, tipped.. And fell. It rolled on the floor and came to a stop at Zare's feet, still glaring up at him.

The young cadet fainted.

It was after some time that Zare awoke - but thankfully, not long enough to be found.  
When he opened his eyes, he was lying behind the exact same laundry rack from before- but Commant Aresko, head or body, was nowhere to be seen.  
It was still dark. Zare decided to sneak back to his dormitory before anyone could catch him.  
Had it all been a dream?  
He had undergone gruelling training that day, the dinner hadn't quite agreed with his stomach, and he had stayed up till midnight to meet Ezra.  
"Stupid soup," he muttered, settling on the meal to blame for the vision of guilt, guilt that he didn't even have. "I'm doing what's best for the good people out there," he added self-reassuredly.  
He snuck back into his bed without much difficulty; there was a stormtrooper on watch at the dorms entrance, but he was dozing.

No one inside the Academy noticed Zare's little adventure that night.


End file.
